Charlie Kirk assassin was living with trans roommate

I'm not sure that there are many traditional left wingers in America except for Noam Chomsky, who has always been politically marginal, and who is 96 years old.

Their tin ear was on display at Kash Patel's Senate hearing the other day. Amy Klobuchar is one of the few Senate Democrats who can still speak the vernacular of the New Deal Democrat, and might have been a better VP for Biden than Harris was.

But stick Kash Patel in front of her, and Klobuchar, knowing that Charlie Kirk was a friend of Patel, can barely squeeze out a passive-aggressive "sorry for your loss" before wanging on about how right wing extremism is the main threat and left wing extremism is definitely not a thing. Even Klobuchar, who's one of the smarter Democrats, really can't read the room.

Don't get me started on Cory Booker, whose addiction to ham acting is such that, if politics doesn't work out for him, he could have a career in Christian movies.

Trans rights could've easily attached itself to either left or right wing politics and for a considerable time it did.

Unfortunately traditional left-wing parties and supporters are reluctant to distance themselves (seeing them as continual underdogs), so we end up being in a bizarre situation where you are more likely to support right-wing politics on basis that they stand up to the trans insanity.

Traditional left-wingers in America still won't accept that they need to stop allowing trans activists spouting their nonsense and violence. They need to call out anyone who says "Protect trans youth" with images of knives and guns. It's this that feeds into Robinson's social media feed that breeds murderous ideas.

I disagree. Games can induce more dependency and more anger. They’re addictive and wholly involving. Many also allow you to chat to friends, so you’re not only receiving the negative effects of the game yourself, you’re chatting with others receiving the same, which can reinforce the effects and further strengthen the ‘reality’ of the game world.

there is no scientific evidence to support a causal link between playing violent video games and committing acts of real-world violence'.

It’s useful to remember that the tobacco industry relied on the “no causal link” for decades to deny that smoking caused lung cancer - even disputing Richard Doll’s very clear statistical evidence - until the actual mechanism for the damage was found.

Yes, I’m very familiar with Drill music.

But as I said, it’s peers that are the main influence on adolescents. So a middle class white kid in a nice part of Surrey can listen to Drill via internet streaming without ever carrying a knife or being involved in violent crime, whereas the kids who are growing up on the same sorts of London council estates as the Drill artists themselves grew up on, whose brothers and cousins are already involved in gang activity, are far more likely to be involved in crime, including the crimes described in Drill music.

Gang related violence is of course incredibly concerning but it’s not quite the same sort of violence as we are discussing here and has different drivers and underlying causes, which was exactly the sort of clarification Charlie Kirk was trying to make at the moment he was fatally shot.

Have you read the wealth of data on it collated from literally decades of studies? It's been studied extensively. The University of Oxford, The Guardian, and the Centre for Educational Neuroscience are amongst those that have studied it in depth and the conclusion was 'there is no scientific evidence to support a causal link between playing violent video games and committing acts of real-world violence'.

Some studies noted a small increase in aggressive feelings after playing violent games but the unanimous verdict was that this doesn't translate to real world violence. They also stated the belief that 'focusing on the alleged link between games and violence distracts from the real societal issues that contribute to violence, such as media literacy, mental health support, and parenting.'

It's more likely that games provide a release IMO.

Are you familiar with 'drill' music? It's strongly associated with inner city gang violence, stabbings, etc. The police have banned it before now and tried to use lyrics as evidence in homicide cases. Much of it is about taunting 'the opps' (opposition) and year on year many drill mc's are murdered.

There's no doubt a bit of a chicken and egg scenario but I think it's safe to say it's not just an incidental byproduct of crimes/lifestyle that would exist anyway. It actively fuels stabbings and shootings due to the way gangs use it to publicly insult their rivals, who then feel pressured to react to save face/not be seen as weak. This is the reason police have banned some drill videos from YouTube and the reason why many of the performers wear balaclavas ('no face no case').

Some random lyrics:

"I chinged man's face then he fell to the floor. Coulda left him but I chopped him more. Bro didn't like him so I chopped him, chopped him. Didn't even know what I chopped him for".

"Dont need to piss on a mans grave im the reason theres worms in a mans face."

"If she's holding your wap, then she can get wacked too. Or she can get grabbed. Locked in a dark room, fed nothing but cat food."

“I see the USA takin’ the piss out of knifes, Ever cornered a man and tore out his flesh while you look in his eyes?”

“I release my stress on flesh. I carve out wounds in backs and chests.”

"My man had a closed casket, His face is still on the raq that’s ments."

"i wanna dig up lzz's grave open his coffin and spit in his face."

Just a random selection from a quick Google. Some are even worse and joking about the victim's mum crying on TV etc. I find this stuff way more disturbing than any games because most of it is talking about real events. You can find reddit threads where people are explaining the murders being referenced. Teenagers are the main audience that listen to this stuff.

Absolutely! It’s definitely never as simple as a game (or a film or a rock star) being a singular negative influence, it’s more a perfect storm of multiple influences coming together in a person who has also has both the means and the physical ability to commit the act plus either the naivety to believe they will get away with it or the willingness to die while doing it (the suicide-by-cop effect).
I doubt many of them have a realistic sense of the soul crushing monotony of spending decades in prison but perhaps the lack of an ability to conceptualise long passages of time is just an intrinsic part of being a young person!

I think we have to be careful with the idea of the "video games made him do it". His obsession was around Helldivers 2, a sci-fi shooter, quite removed from reality. In all instances gamers don't get caught up in the virtual reality of the games, but rather break the games down into systems, remembering button-combos, stats for moves etc.

But gaming culture which seems to be online with all the memes seems to have played quite a part in it.

I think he's had a heady mix of all these messages online, the trans victimhood, the excessive messaging that people who state biologically reality etc are literal Nazis etc, has led to this violent outcome.

More of the issue I take with gaming is if these people are spending all day on them, instead of being in education or employment. The isolation and lack of real-world interactions leads to the disconnect.

My experience of fandoms is it's definitely subject matter and definitely demographics. And they can change significantly based on key individuals who dominate the group. Male dominated groups behave very differently to female ones, but both can be completely obsessive and competitive in different ways to the point of unhealthy. They easily spiral out of control and unless you are aware of it, it's not hard to get sucked up into it and lose touch with what is otherwise regarded as normal. Especially if it's your entire social circle. It's definitely stronger the younger you are and starts to fade at about age 25 (more out of having done it all before rather than because life gets in the way tbh).

I've been there and got many t-shirts with various communities and made a lot of friends doing it. The internal group politics can be crazy - and I think this is something that's out looked - there's definitely power struggles within these groups. Proving yourself to the group i would very much argue is usually more important that making a point outside the group. Outsiders don't get this.

In terms of music, film, gaming etc the interesting thing is I do think it used to be about film and music. Now I think gaming is eclipsing them and there's the right of the political fandom itself where you get political activist groups. Politics has almost overtaken music as a pass time for many in the younger generation. We will never see a super group again after the current ones have gone. It's an age that's past it's peak.

I wouldn't agree with that at all. The younger people I know mainly seem to listen to music via gaming and don't watch many films. Maybe in earlier times?

I want to say as well about games - JKR wrote well about fandoms in Ink Black Heart, but there's a lot more that could be said. I'm interested in how some fandoms are notoriously toxic and some very much aren't. A lot of that probably has to do with the demographics.

Great point, though, about gaming being more immersive, the Main Character syndrome, the repetition, the dopamine hits. I'm not a gamer and don't know the tribes, but even from my very superficial knowledge, it's hard to think of a TV or movie fandom that's quite as deranged as the Sonic fandom.

I doubt that, largely because in films and music the viewer/listener is an observer of someone else’s story, whereas in games the player becomes the (usually main) character.

Plus the repetition of game play and the dopamine reward of completing a challenging task or level is much more addictive than listening to music or watching a film.

Of course, the type of game matters too - something like Tetris is going to affect the brain very differently than a first person shooter.

I found with my own son that some games made him frustrated and that could erupt into anger. We eventually limited him to world building games and slow moving fantasy adventures where you go round collecting magic items and talking to elves (and he never played online as that wasn’t much of a thing for console players in his teen years). Thankfully he always preferred going outside with his skateboard anyway, so it wasn’t too difficult to limit the influence of games.

Ultimately, the biggest influence on adolescents is always their peers, regardless of the time period they grew up in or what tech/media is available to them.

I think films and music influence far more.

They probably were on edge because the previous alert in Salt Lake City was a viable device. Two men were arrested and other paraphernalia seized.

www.cbsnews.com/news/salt-lake-city-fox-13-vehicle-targeted-incendiary-device/

Another video from that old school investigative style reporter I posted up
thread. This time an interview with a mum who believes her autistic child was groomed into transitioning via Discord.

Interesting to see one of the sorts of stories that most of us here are so very familiar with making it’s way to a new audience.

Looks like the bomb threat in Phoenix AZ was a suspiciously abandoned bag - no idea if it was an innocent accident (I once had a mild panic that the Met’s bomb squad might waste hundreds of thousands pounds detonating the school backpack my son had left on the East London line!) or a malicious prank at a time when Turning Point employees and Phoenix LE are, rather understandably, on high alert (Kirk’s funeral is taking place in Phoenix this coming Sunday).

Has anyone seen that the bomb squad are at Turning Point HQ in Phoenix? This is the second bomb scare I’ve seen reported since the assassination. The previous one was an attack on a Fox News vehicle. 😬

That puts me in mind of the Hollywood female superhero/villain trope. Women ‘fighting’ men twice their size and winning seems to have been part of the convincing of some dafties that there is no real need for a female sporting category.

This reminds me of the NHS Fife Friday afternoon press release debacle; chatGPT denied it that it wrote it. 😡 But then it would, wouldn't it? 😂

Agreed. Playing games seems to make them think they’re the only clever, sentient beings and others are mere props and obstacles. They’re probably quite skilled at whatever games they play, so were confident they’d win.

I know people often criticise the internet, but I think gaming is bad too. I work with children and I think it affects their brains - their ability to think, their maturity, their understanding of other people and the world around them.

Stupid young people who cannot even imagine that there are adults who can out-think them is not a new thing, but playing games online seems to facilitate it

There is a lot of suspicion online re: if the text chat with the boyfriend was staged as a cover up.

I think it’s possible. I also think it’s possible that the stilted old-lady tone is an autistic trait or similar cognitive difference.

I expect LE will figure this out soon, especially as I presume TR will now be having various tests and observations re: potential presence of mental illness, ND and/or personality disorders.

In some ways I am reminded of the two teens who killed Brianna Ghey - not that Tyler or Lance have been shown to have any interest in online gore thus far, but the emotional immaturity and matter of factness in the texts, coupled with the belief that they would outsmart LE and get away with a high profile crime committed in daylight, on a route with lots of CCTV and dozens of witnesses seems like a similarly?

Oh how sweet, notice Klippenstein entirely avoided the furry connection because it's not sweet, it's a depraved adult fetish brought on by porn and trans-identifying gay men are into it. He never mentioned the trans mass shootings in the US by trans youths, nor did he mention Armed Queers Salt Lake City being investigated by the FBI as the head Ermiya Fanaeian is a trans-identifying male, Marxist revolutionary. Transtifa is real.

I agree with those points @JamieCannister

I have a couple of reasons why I am not convinced by that article (this post assumes his guilt) -

(1) He drove 260 to shoot and kill someone heavily linked to politics - that in my opinion pretty much means that by definition he was utterly crazy (no evidence for this beyond the shooting) or pretty damn interested in politics and opposed to Kirk.

(2) An old friend who spends time on a discord server with him, may have an insight into what he was like 8 years ago (or whenever) plus an insight into how he behaves on a particular server with people he has known for years. This does not rule out the possibility he was on loads of other discord servers, with very different people and saying very different things.